appreciate you being with us, sir. there has been a lot of talk, a lot of rumors over the last 24 hours about a possible cease-fire, about some sort of negotiated settlement. i know the israeli cabinet met earlier this evening. what's the latest on that? >> i can't say because obviously, while negotiations are going on, we're not going to disclose any details. all i can say is that our contacts, and we are trying to explore diplomatic ways to end this, but as we have stated since the beginning of this operation, the only objective of this operation, only objective we are trying to achieve is to stop rocket fire on israeli civilians but not just to obtain a short-term truce that will be broken again and again by hamas, but to obtain the cessation of rocket fire for a long period, for a very long period. now, we have tried to explore diplomatic ways by alerting the security council, by trying to file official complaints with the security council and hoping that they will take a stance or do something, and as that didn't